Meet OOMK (One Of My Kind magazine), the collective championing Muslim women in the zine world, based in London, where faith, art, and identity are being explored. Playing instruments was banned during Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and many conservative Muslims still frown on most forms of music today. That is why this all-female orchestra in […]

Growing up in Mexico, neither hijabs nor niqabs were a thing. On paper, we are still a very Catholic country with 83% of the population being identified as such in the national census. Muslims in Mexico are concentrated among Lebanese-Mexican communities and southern Indigenous communities in Chiapas, Mexico. Broadly speaking, twenty years ago we were […]

Michael Jordan has his own line of shoes. Tiger Woods has his own line of golf apparel. And now Ruqsana Begum, a Muslim muay Thai fighter, has her own line of sports hijabs. The children’s TV show Sesame Street has introduced a new character: Zari, a 6-year-old girl from Afghanistan. She made her debut on the […]

I will never be surprised by the amount of discrimination and racist language used in state policy. From Canada’s Bill C-51 to America’s Patriot Act, proposed bills and enforced legislation say a lot about current atmospheres of tension. Most recently, a proposal has been made in Belgium to ask newly admitted immigrants to sign an […]

I have a crush on a muppet. Yes, my most recent girl-crush is on a fuzzy magenta puppet in vibrant dresses. I am smitten with Sesame Street’s newest family member from Afghanistan: Zari. I grew up watching Sesame Street. My mom tells me how my schedule as a preschooler was set around watching Ernie & […]

Meet Lulwah Al Hmoud, A Saudi artist, whose work reframes traditional Islamic geometry and calligraphy using techniques such as silkscreen printing, painting and gilding. Dalia Mogahed is an American Muslim scholar. The Tempest had the opportunity to speak to Mogahed about her work, projects, upbringing, and more. At a time when fear of international terror […]

In February, The Daily Beast published this story on Nadia Ali, a Pakistani-American porn star who is, as the article describes, “a 24-year-old…. first-generation American from Pakistan. She’s been in the adult industry for just a year, but doesn’t mind pushing religious boundaries in the name of XXX entertainment. Oh, and she’s also a practicing […]

Feminism in the United States is back in the spotlight, but it looks a lot different than it has in the past. Muslim-American women know this all too well. The stereotypes they face are many — that they are terrorists or subservient to men or lacking their own agency. If you haven’t yet heard of […]

One of the biggest problems that Muslim women face today is the need to deconstruct and reconstruct narratives of ourselves in the media. (That’s why Muslimah Media Watch exists, amirite?) A recent interview of  Professor Jackie Ying, a Chinese Muslim scientist in Singapore, by a Singaporean Malay language news channel shows that this need can […]

Recently, The Atlantic posted a short film produced by the Thomas Reuters Foundation (trust.org) about one Syrian woman’s new life, Starting Over in the Netherlands. It begins by showing a picturesque view of the city, Kessel-Eik, as the woman, Hanadi, bikes through it. As a tranquil melody plays, we see a church behind trees, a […]